As a therapeutic agent for hypertension, there are medicinal drugs such as various neuroleptic agents acting on regulation systems by neural factors, ACE inhibitors acting on regulation systems involving humoral factors, AT-receptor antagonists, Ca antagonists effecting on regulation systems by vascular endothelium-derived substances, and antihypertensive diuretics effecting on humoral regulation systems in the kidney. These drugs are mainly used for serious hypertensive patients in medical institutions. Medicinal drugs used against hypertension at present provide satisfactory efficacy but heavily burden a patient with not a few side-effects.
Therefore, general therapies for improving the quality of life such as dietary therapy, exercise therapy, and restriction of alcohol drinking and smoking are applied to a wide range of patients from prehypertension to serious hypertension. With the growing recognition of importance of general therapies, there have been mentions particularly for importance of improvement of dietary life. Under such circumstances, foods having hypotensive effects have been actively searched for a hypotensive material derived from foods, and many active ingredients thereof have been isolated and identified.
W0-A05/72533 describes that a coffee beverage composition containing hydroxyhydroquinone in a decreased amount such that a weight ratio of hydroxyhydroquinone/chlorogenic acids is not more than 10/10000 exhibits a hypotensive action.
JP-A2003-204755 and JP-A2003-204756 propose coffee beverages containing chlorogenic acids at high concentration produced by blending an extracted liquid of raw beans.